


Presently and Far Away

by Hannah



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-30
Updated: 2009-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On bedtime stories, and the truths therein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presently and Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://jadelennox.livejournal.com/profile)[**jadelennox**](http://jadelennox.livejournal.com/) as part of [](http://community.livejournal.com/purimgifts/profile)[**purimgifts**](http://community.livejournal.com/purimgifts/). Thanks to [](http://serrico.livejournal.com/profile)[**serrico**](http://serrico.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading. 500 words.

At this moment Charlotte Charles is eight years, eight months, twenty-two days, seventeen hours and thirteen seconds old. She is happily listening to her father spin stories of places she'd never seen outside of her mind's eye, as he soothes her sores and aches with stories of his time in the service. The previous night had been for the two of them, with plans made for where they would go and what they would do someday out in the wide world, but this night is for stories of what had happened years ago, before Chuck had come along.  
Dolls and other toys serve as stand-ins for the characters in Charles Charles' personal tales, and Chuck happily allows her beloved Rex to act out a part never before performed by a terrible lizard king: that of an evil vizier happily chucking three prisoners of war into a dank and dark dungeon. This was the very outskirts of the Arabian Desert, and not even American army men were safe from his anger. The wrong place at the wrong time is a terrible place to be, especially if one is ignorant on local customs governing the placement of shoes.  
Chuck sits quietly in her bed, scratching less now that she has more to listen to, curled up tight. Her father leans in close, talking more quietly, and she leans forward to listen. She can see the vizier twisting his moustache – for every vizier has a moustache – and her eyes go wide when her father talks about him and his two closest friends being shackled and trying to shuck their bonds to no avail. They offered up bribes and bargains and even begged, and it was not until they offered their services that they were allowed outside their cell. Even evil viziers have children, and even in the very outskirts of the Arabian Desert children have birthday parties. There were no balloons or ice-cream cakes or donkeys missing their tails that needed to be pinned back on, but there were clowns, just the same. Clowns that used the laughter of the children at the party and a careful application of compliments to the caterers to slip out the back door in the middle of a rampaging ruckus, but before the ruckus got running, set it in motion with mundane magic.  
Her father demonstrated with three, four, and five balls of socks the skills that led both his own child and children of viziers to gasp, and twisted his hands to show how much effort it took for Dwight Dixon to effortlessly make a coin disappear and then reappear. And Chuck's best friend Ned's father had a special trick of his own. Her eyes went wide at what he spoke about that would have been unbelievable if he hadn't been telling it in a story, because stories are meant to be believed in, about a bird thought to be dead, which through a combination of handkerchiefs and slight of hand, managed to fly away again.


End file.
